


take flight

by memorysdaughter



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, Disabled Character, Elemental Magic, F/F, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, No TLOU II spoilers, Orphans, Secrets, clickers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24891151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memorysdaughter/pseuds/memorysdaughter
Summary: An immune survivor shows up in Jackson, horrifically traumatized from medical experimentation and unable to communicate.  When Ellie and Dina take it upon themselves to go looking for the truth about the girl's past, they find a web of bizarre science, attempted cures, and more than a few unspoken secrets.No TLOU II spoilers.
Relationships: Dina & Ellie (The Last of Us), Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Original Female Character, Maria/Tommy (The Last of Us)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

_She’s never been this cold before. She’s been cold before, but not_ _this_ _cold. The sky above is dark and there are little things falling from it and those things are cold. There are things her feet are touching and those things are cold and sharp. There are things her hands are touching and those things are cold and sharp. She tries to move her fingers like they forced her to do at the institute, but she can’t. Her head is too fuzzy._

_She’s trying to walk as far as she can, but it’s getting harder. It’s dark and she’s hungry and thirsty. Her legs hurt - she’s never walked this far, as far as she knows. She falls and gets up, falls and gets up, falls and gets up, the knees of her pants torn and soaking wet now. She knows there’s something wrong with her legs but it seems like there’s something wrong with her entire body; it throbs in time with her head._

_She can still see the lights off in the distance, and she hopes she’s making her way towards them. Lights mean people. There were people with her lights. She hopes these people are better people._

_She hopes the lights are better lights._

_She falls and lays with her face against the cold ground. She forces her head up, forces her exhausted body to crawl. Her knees and knuckles scrape against the rocks and gravel and branches, but she just wants to get closer to the lights. They’re singing out for her now, calling her closer._

_She reaches forward and pulls herself up the hill, grabs onto a post in front of her, and tries to stand. Her legs won’t support her. Her head throbs._

_She collapses in the snow, though she doesn’t know that word, her institute tag clanging against the fence post. She cannot read, but if she could, she’d see her designation hit the snow at the same time her fragile and battered body does - B1RD1._

* * *

“Come on, Birdie, we’re almost there,” Ellie promises. “You’re doing a great job.”

The sun overhead pours like liquid through the tree leaves overhead, dappling the ground below and the faces of the three girls making their way through the forest. It’s a beautiful summer day and they’re taking full advantage of it.

Dina skips ahead, carrying the picnic basket, which is heavy with contributions from both Maria and Joel; she often turns around to make sure the others are still following her, an easy smile on her face. Her hair, pulled up into a thick bun, bobs up and down as she keeps tabs on her traveling partners, radiant in the sun bearing down.

Ellie is a little slower, carrying the bag of towels and keeping her eyes on Birdie at the same time. She’s happy, glad Tommy and Maria have finally relaxed enough to let Birdie come on an outing. She and Dina have done lots of things with Birdie inside the settlement, but some things just need to be experienced outside - including swimming on a hot summer day.

The last member of the group follows hesitantly behind, slowed by a combination of tentative nervousness and body instability. Birdie is a foundling, discovered just outside the settlement during a snowstorm. Redheaded, ghost pale and tiny, with a freckly face and a quick smile, Birdie is curious about almost everything - except leaving the comfort of her usual surroundings. Her legs, bowed and twisted, are usually good enough to get her wherever she wants to go in Jackson, but she doesn’t seem to feel the same way about going to Ellie and Dina’s favorite swimming pond. Her arms are drawn up against her body as she concentrates hard on where to put her next step, and every now and then she lets out a confused or unhappy clicking noise, extremely similar to the noise made by certain types of infected still inhabiting parts of the world.

“Come on, Birdie, good girl,” Ellie prompts. “You’re going to like swimming.”

 _“Ah-eeh,”_ Birdie informs Ellie. It’s one of the only actual word-like sounds she’ll speak, and those closest to her have decided it’s referring to one of her favorite people - Ellie.

“Almost there!” Dina sings out.

Ellie turns to look at her girlfriend, and grins. “Excited much?”

“How could I _not_ be?” Dina asks, returning the grin. “It’s a beautiful day, we don’t have to work, we’re going swimming, I’m pretty sure there’s cookies in this basket, and _we’re_ the ones who get to take Birdie out of town for her first time.”

Ellie has to agree with that - she thought that Tommy and Maria would _never_ let the girl, who they’d adopted, leave town. Birdie is, inarguably, an extremely complicated individual who showed a great deal of fear of many things and whose exposure to the world hadn’t always gone smoothly. Add that to Birdie’s lack of experience out in the world and the way that most of her vocalizations sound like a threatening creature - Ellie completely understands why Tommy and Maria are overly protective.

“I thought they’d _never_ let us go,” Ellie tells Dina. “I think we got more warnings this morning than we did the first day we went out on patrol together.”

Dina’s eyes glint with mischief. “Can you blame them?”

Ellie just grins in response.

It takes nearly a half hour to make it to the pond, but eventually they arrive at the shaded glen with the swimming hole at its center. Lush greenery and big rocks surround the small body of water; a small sandy area sits at one side. The water is clear and not too deep. All in all, it’s a perfect place to spend a hot summer day.

“What do you think, Birdie?” Dina asks as they stop in the grass at the pond’s edge.

Birdie takes in their surroundings, turning her head from side to side. It’s hard to read her expression due to the darkened goggles over her eyes, but she seems mildly impressed. _“Ah-eeh.”_

“Good enough for me,” Dina says. “You want to eat first or swim first?”

“I think it’s going to take some convincing to get her in the water,” Ellie says. “We might as well eat first.”

They eat their picnic on a grassy spot in the sunshine. Birdie enjoys her meal with her traditional aplomb, using both of her hands to smash her sandwich into her mouth - manners never having been one of the things Maria could teach her to master -, while the other girls eat a bit slower, passing the large flask of lemonade between them.

Once Birdie’s sandwich is nothing more than jelly smears on her face and fingers, Dina packs up the picnic basket. “You ready for this?”

“This is either going to be amazing or awful,” Ellie says with a rueful smile. “Birdie, c’mon. Let’s go swimming.”

She holds her hands out to Birdie, who immediately takes them with an inquisitive click.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that,” Dina says. “It’s just…”

“I get it, it’s weird,” Ellie says, walking backwards towards the pond. She kicks her shoes off as she goes, letting go of Birdie’s hands intermittently to peel off her T-shirt. “I’ve come to accept it as just another one of her many charms.”

Birdie gives Dina a jelly-smeared grin.

Dina laughs. “All right, all right. Let’s do this.”

Ellie lets the water lick at her ankles, still pulling Birdie with her. “Keep coming, little bird. Into the water. It’s safe.”

The water touches Birdie’s feet. _“Ah-eeh?”_

“It’s safe,” Ellie repeats. “Keep coming. Come towards me.”

Birdie wades in almost as far as Ellie goes, letting the water get up to her knees, before she stops and clicks, twisting her head and drawing her arms up into her body.

“I know, it’s weird,” Ellie says. “But it’s fun.”

“She’s been in a bathtub,” Dina points out, splashing into the water next to them. “How is this any different?”

“That’s smaller. This is deeper.”

“I mean, _obviously,”_ Dina says with a smirk. “But it’s all still water.”

“You’re good, little bird,” Ellie says. “I’m gonna just…”

Bending her knees, she yanks Birdie forward into a hug. Birdie squeals and tries to get her twisty hands around Ellie’s neck.

“Easy,” Ellie tells her, and attempts to reposition Birdie’s fingers around her shoulders instead. “Here we go.”

With that, she steps backward into the pond, taking both of them off the sandy ledge separating the shallow end from the deep. Both girls float, Ellie kicking her legs to tread water with Birdie wrapped around her clicking confusedly.

“What do you think, Bird?” Dina asks. “Water, yes or no?”

_“Ah-eeh? Ah-eeh?”_

“I think that’s an inconclusive opinion,” Dina says.

Ellie leans back, removing Birdie’s fingers from her shoulders and taking Birdie by the hands. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

She watches Birdie kick her legs, hesitantly at first, then faster as the feeling seems to appeal to her.

“How long’s it been since you learned to swim?” Dina asks, bobbing up behind Ellie to tickle her.

“Couple’a years. It was one of the first things Joel did after we… got back. Taught me to swim.”

“Turned out to be a pretty good investment.”

 _“Ah-eeh,”_ Birdie says.

“Yeah?” Ellie asks her.

Birdie’s head slows its rapid movements, her breathing rate drops down; her fingers, in Ellie’s, loosen. She brings up one of her hands to touch Ellie’s face, one of her favorite ways to show happiness.

“See, little bird, it’s nice,” Ellie says.

They swim for a while, letting the afternoon slip away. Ellie gets Birdie to paddle hesitantly between her and Dina, and pronounces the swimming lesson a success.

Ellie walks Birdie out of the pond, letting her regain her “land legs” before setting her loose. Dina wraps a towel around Ellie’s shoulders and leans in for a kiss. Ellie smiles; Dina tastes like grape jelly.

“This was nice.”

“Mm-hmm. We should get Tommy and Maria to let us ‘baby-sit’ more often.”

“As long as it gets us off work.”

“It’s still kinda work,” Ellie points out. “She’s not exactly…”

She freezes. “Did you hear that?”

Dina looks up. “Voices.”

“Were any patrols scheduled to come this way?”

Dina shakes her head. She crouches and reaches for the picnic basket. Ellie scoots a little bit up the bank, ready to grab Birdie. Her heart rings in her ears. “Dina,” she says softly, trying not to cause alarm.

“Yeah?” Dina asks, checking her pistol.

“The bird has flown.”

“What?”

Ellie indicates the area around them.

“Shit.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Ellie throws her T-shirt back on, yanks her sneakers onto her feet, and grabs her bow and arrows from the bag of towels. “Birdie,” she hisses, just in case their charge is a few feet off, inspecting a tree or an interesting pattern on a rock. “Birdie!”

“... you hear that?” one of the voices from above asks.

And Ellie does, at the exact same time one of the other strangers does.

“A clicker!”

“Fuck,” Ellie breathes.

She crouches down, moving quickly and quietly through the trees, hoping she gets to Birdie before the unknown posse does.

 _Tommy and Maria are going to_ _kill_ _me._

* * *

_They examine the girl when Joel and Tommy bring her in from the worst snowstorm that winter. Legs, deformed. Fingers, curled. A thick leather cuff locked - yes, locked - around her wrist, a tag dangling from it: B1RD1, and a logo of a circle with interlocking lines inside it. Scars all over her torso - surgical, from the looks of them. And on her right bicep - a healed-over bite._

_They sedate her until the danger of losing her hands and feet to frostbite passes, until they can all admit they’re a little bit terrified of her and what her presence might mean. Maria watches over her, day and night, feeding her broth a spoonful at a time._

_They see her eyes for the first time on day four. They’re bright green, and there’s a definite intelligence behind them, though they drift and seem to have trouble focusing._

_She bites at Maria on day four as well, clawing at the spoon because it’s not getting to her mouth fast enough. It’s decided to transition her off solely broth at that point and let her try bread. Whatever they feed her, she can’t get enough of it, cramming it into her mouth with agitated ferocity, sometimes nearly biting her fingers in her haste to eat._

_On day five the sedatives wear off fully and they hear her click for the first time. Tommy nearly shoots her in the head, simply on instinct. She pushes herself off the bed and scuttles on her frost-bitten feet into a corner, eyes wide, holding her hands up and clicking in what can only be described as a terrified way. She goes through a full-blown panic attack, sobbing and beating herself in the head, curling into a ball as though afraid she’ll be attacked._

_Maria is the only one she’ll accept, and that’s only after the panic attack leaves her a shaking puddle on the floor, exhausted. She clings onto Maria, teeth chattering. Maria rocks her to sleep and wipes the tear marks from her face._

_They start calling her “Birdie” after she’s been with them a week, taking the name from the characters on the tag attached to her. Tommy gets wire cutters and they clip the cuff off her wrist. This seems to confuse her. Tommy holds it out to her. She looks from him to the cuff to the bright circle of scarred, fish-belly-white skin on her wrist. She touches the tag. Obligingly, Tommy cuts that away from the cuff and finds her a string. She wears it around her neck, and they’ll often find her holding it, threading it through her fingers, twiddling it back and forth._

_It takes a few weeks for Birdie to want to leave Tommy and Maria’s house. She seems extremely confused by the ability to go outside. The snow completely throws her - she streams it through her mittened fingers with a look of complete awe on her face. The sun amazes her; she’ll tilt her face up towards it, eyes closed, and rock back and forth, letting it play across her forehead and cheeks. They have to rustle up a pair of dark-tinted goggles for her, though, because the sun seems to hurt her eyes when she’s outdoors, almost as though she’d never spent much time in it. At first she hates the goggles, but as she grows accustomed to both the feeling on her face and how she can see everything around her without pain, she puts them on without hesitation, ready to take on the day._

_They try to make a list of things they know about Birdie, filling it in slowly, but it’s all guesses. Probably held captive. Probably by someone who knew what they were doing, someone who’d had experience with it and was organized, someone who was medically knowledgeable, judging from the scars on her. Probably hadn’t seen sunlight in years. Probably wasn’t fed much. Probably was used for experimentation of some sort._

_Probably had seen clickers. Probably had been near them._

_Probably was no stranger to violence._

_And then there’s one thing they see Birdie do that absolutely cements that last “probably” into a “definitely.”_

* * *

Ellie creeps through the forest. She moves swiftly up behind the posse. There’s four of them, looking like regular Joes just out for a walk. They’re armed, though, too armed for a simple walk in the woods. Maybe coming to pull an assault on a Jackson patrol?

“You hear it?” one of them asks.

“It was over there.”

Ellie hears Birdie again. It’s not an angry click, though - more happy. She knows the posse won’t hear it that way.

There’s movement in the grass beside her and Ellie flicks her gaze over to see Dina.

“We find her?” Dina whispers.

Ellie shakes her head. “Up there ahead of us.”

“We gonna take these guys down?”

“I don’t wanna kill anybody…”

“But Tommy and Maria are gonna _murder_ us if we lose her.”

“There!” one of the posse shouts, and it’s followed by gunfire.

Ellie hears Birdie scream and it ignites something like rage in her joints. She shoves herself out of the grass and sprints towards the posse. She leaps into the air, landing squarely on the back of one of the men, wrapping her legs around his waist and twisting, throwing them both to the ground.

“What the fuck -?” he gets out.

Ellie’s back on her feet and scrambling towards the next guy. He’s got a pistol out, aiming at something in the grass. Ellie draws her bow and shoots him in the back of the thigh; he drops with a twisted yell.

Birdie screams again; it breaks Ellie’s heart. She hears Dina running up at the third man, hears a shot.

 _Where’s the fourth guy?_ Ellie scans the forest. For a heart-pounding few seconds she doesn’t see him or Birdie. Then her eyes lock on Birdie, down a small slope and pressed up against a tall rock, hands held up in front of her, while the last man of the posse stalks towards her. Blood drips from a wound on Birdie’s arm.

“What the fuck,” she hears the man say. “You’re not a clicker.”

Birdie ducks her head, sobbing, cowering. Her hands stay out in front of her, shaking; they seem to get bluish-pale.

Ellie knows what’s going to happen and she feels fear clench in her chest. She skids down the hillside, gravel scraping her legs, tumbles, regains her footing, and bolts in Birdie’s direction. “Birdie, _no!”_

She’s too late. Birdie’s hand jerks out, away from her body, and a spear of ice flies, impossibly, out of her palm. The giant icicle spears into the man’s chest, punching through him like a nail hammered through a fence. He drops to the ground.

 _“Shit,”_ Ellie breathes.

Birdie’s head turns towards Ellie. She looks down at her palm and then back up to Ellie.

“It’s okay, little bird,” Ellie says. She holds her hands up, moving slowly towards Birdie. “It’s going to be okay. I know you don’t understand…”

Birdie clicks unhappily, shaking, watching Ellie approach her.

“... but you’re going to be okay. I’ll take you back home.”

The color drains rapidly from Birdie’s face; her bowed knees knock together. She reaches out for Ellie, whimpering as her legs seem to lose their ability to hold her upright.

Ellie grabs for her just in time and catches Birdie as the smaller girl drops unconscious.

* * *

_The first time it happens, it happens with a rabbit._

_Birdie’s transformation from a nearly-dead winter foundling to a mostly-healthy-looking young person was remarkable to all who observed her progress. As it turns out, her deformed legs still allow her to walk, though she tires easily. Tommy gets one of the woodworkers in the settlement to make her a cane, which she’ll deign to use only sometimes, preferring to simply be stubborn and inch forward on her own, no matter how slowly she goes._

_She puts on weight; it fills out her face and the nutrients make her hair shiny. She devours every new thing offered to her without much fuss and generally with a great deal of enthusiasm._

_She falls in love with Ellie and gets upset whenever Ellie’s attention is elsewhere, or when Ellie herself is gone from Birdie’s sight. Maria calls her a “pouty puss” which Birdie thinks is funny, but not funny enough to make her forget about the absence of her favorite playmate._

_The settlement quickly learns about Birdie’s vocalizations, and though some are upset about having a “near-clicker” living among them, Maria shuts dissent down quickly. Birdie is an innocent child, she tells them,_ _not_ _a clicker. She was an experiment, a prisoner. We need to show her that we care for her and we won’t hurt her._

_There’s talk about going to look for the lab Birdie must have escaped from, but a plan’s never made. When asked questions Birdie has no responses, no clicks or repetitions of her few actual word-like sounds. She continues to play with her “name tag,” often to the total ignorance of everything and everyone about her._

_The little family takes walks most evenings through town, Birdie walking either between Maria and Tommy or next to Ellie, clinging to her walking partners, legs jerking with the excitement of being with her favorite people. There’s something about the sunset that transfixes Birdie; she’ll stare up at it for as long as she’s allowed, goggled eyes on the sky._

_On one of those walks, a rabbit jumps out of the forest not five feet from the walking party. Birdie screams and whips her hand away from her body, letting go of Maria’s hand. The rabbit falls over, seemingly without any cause, and tumbles into the tall grass._

_Tommy approaches the rabbit hesitantly. When he bends down, he sees an icicle, eight inches long, stabbed directly through the rabbit’s heart._

_It’s June._

* * *

Ellie grabs up Birdie and cradles her. She looks over at the man on the ground. A pool of blood forms beneath his body.

_“Fuck.”_

From the hill above comes Dina’s voice: “Ellie? They’re gone.”

“Okay,” Ellie forces herself to say. She gets to her feet and shifts Birdie in her arms.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s…” The words won’t come out. “She’s going to be fine.”

Dina appears at the top of the hill. She sees Birdie limp in Ellie’s arms and her face falls. “Did she…?”

Ellie nods.

“Shit.”

“We have to get her home,” Ellie says. The world seems to have slowed down around her; she’s having a hard time getting her words out.

“Yeah,” Dina agrees. “I’ll get our stuff. Just start walking.”

“Okay.”

Ellie forces herself to turn around, forces herself to start taking steps back towards town. Her chest aches for Birdie. They’d all fought for Birdie to be seen as an ordinary girl with a few quirks, one who was worth protecting, worth accepting. They’d tried to keep her safe.

_But now…?_

One step. Then another. At some point Dina catches up with her, carrying the picnic basket and the bag of towels; she’s stuffed Ellie’s bow into the bag. Neither of them speaks.

The trip back to town takes ten minutes, their legs able to move faster than Birdie’s slow rate. As soon as they’re back inside the gates, Dina says, “I’ll get Maria.”

Ellie nods. Her arms ache. Birdie is still limp, the blood from her arm wound sticky on Ellie’s chest. The sun, which just a few hours ago felt warm and welcoming, now bears down with an almost-unbearable pressure on Ellie’s head. She’s exhausted.

“Ellie?”

She brings her head up to see Joel and realizes her eyes are blurry with tears.

“What happened?” he demands, immediately reaching in to take Birdie from her.

Ellie’s arms sag, released from their burden, and she tries to speak. “Bird…”

Joel looks down at Birdie’s paper-white face. “Did she… hurt someone?” he asks softly.

Ellie nods.

“Someone we know?”

She shakes her head.

“And they’re…?”

She shakes her head again.

“Oh,” Joel says gruffly. “Okay, let’s get her home.”

Maria comes running up the road to meet them, her face a mask of concern and barely-veiled anger. “My girl?” she demands.

Joel leans towards her. Maria’s eyes fill with tears as she reaches down to stroke Birdie’s head. “What happened?” she whispers.

“We… ran into some strangers,” Ellie says, trying to find her voice. “Birdie got scared.”

Dina walks up behind Maria and slips her hand into Ellie’s.

“They… one of them had her pinned down,” Ellie goes on, fortified by the feeling of Dina’s fingers laced with hers. “She protected herself.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Maria leans in and kisses Birdie on the forehead. When she straightens up her eyes are harder. “And you two?”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie says. “It was my fault she wandered away from us.”

“We can talk about that later,” Maria says tightly. “Let’s get her home.”

By the time they reach Tommy and Maria’s, Birdie is shaking in Joel’s arms, her teeth chattering. Her breathing is shallow and her lips have gone a pale bluish color; sweat drips down her face. Joel lays her on the couch. “I’ll get the doctor,” he says.

Maria gets to work immediately, taking off Birdie’s goggles and moving pillows away from her body. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she whispers. “You’re safe.”

Birdie cries out, her body spasming. Her legs jerk in towards her chest, her arms slam against her jaw. Again and again she seizes, teeth chattering, wailing, back arching. It goes on for several long minutes until the cries are replaced with a guttural gagging noise.

Maria rolls Birdie to one side. “Ellie, get me a bowl,” she orders.

Ellie hurries into the kitchen and returns with the biggest mixing bowl. Maria takes it just in time to place it under Birdie’s mouth as the girl vomits. Gasping, choking, Birdie’s body continues to contract on itself while she coughs and vomits again and again.

“You’re okay,” Maria says, stroking Birdie’s forehead. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Ellie gets the feeling the words are more for Maria than they are for Birdie. She doesn’t know what to say or how to help - and she hates that. Uselessness puddles down her spine. She wants to run, to be anywhere but where this suffering is.

 _Suffering you could have stopped,_ her mind reminds her. _If you hadn’t let her go._

Birdie coughs one last time and seems to relax, though still breathing heavily. Her limbs go limp and she opens her eyes as Maria rolls her onto her back.

“Hi, beautiful,” Maria murmurs, stroking sweaty hair back from Birdie’s face.

 _“Eee-ah,”_ Birdie grunts.

“I’m here,” Maria promises her. “I’m right here.”

_“Eee-ah.”_

“I know. It must have been very scary.”

Birdie flicks her eyes over to the far side of the living room, where Ellie and Dina are sharing one armchair awkwardly. _“Ah-eeh,”_ she says tiredly.

“You did a good job,” Ellie says softly.

Birdie takes a deep breath and looks back at Maria.

“You’re safe,” Maria says.

 _“Ah-eeh,”_ Birdie says, and she closes her eyes.

She doesn’t wake when the doctor stitches up her arm, or when Maria and Ellie carefully give her a sponge bath and change her into her favorite nightgown, or when Tommy carries her to her bed, tucking her in with a small stuffed bird one of the ladies in town made for her. She curls up blamelessly, safely, somehow secure in the knowledge she fell asleep with the people she loves the most around her.

* * *

“That was the worst one I’ve seen,” Maria says. “I don’t think she can take many more of those.”

Ellie keeps her eyes on her plate.

“She can stay here,” Tommy says. “We’ll keep an eye on her. She doesn’t need to go anywhere else.”

“I don’t think it was her fault,” Joel says.

“No,” Tommy agrees, “and I’m glad she protected herself, but that don’t mean I’m exactly excited about her having to do it again. She stays here, where we know her and she’s safe.”

“She really liked being out there,” Ellie says softly. “She liked being in the water.”

Tommy sighs. “I’m sure she did. But I’m not willing to risk her safety again. She stays here.”

Dinner conversation turns to other topics; by the time the meal is finished and the dishes are done, no one seems to be in the mood to talk more about Birdie’s afternoon. Ellie takes that as not-quite-forgiveness, and goes out into the deepening evening to find Dina.

Dina finds her first, eyes bright in an expression Ellie knows all too well: shenanigans are on Dina’s mind.

Her girlfriend’s first words bear that out immediately: “I’ve got a plan.”

It’s been a day full of heartbreak, but those four words make Ellie smile. “Oh, do you?”

“I mean, like, a real one this time.”

“A plan for what?”

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t entirely trust me?”

“It’s just that… your plans, in the past… have not entirely gone off without their respective problems.”

“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

“That’s not the best argument for… anything.”

Dina rolls her eyes. “Okay, okay. But this time it’s a good plan.”

“Do tell.”

“We should go find Birdie’s lab.”

“Birdie’s…?”

“You know, the place she escaped from.”

Ellie frowns. “Why?”

“Maybe there’s information on her. On what happened to her, why she’s… the way she is. Maybe her real name. Maybe… a way to make her better.”

Ellie goes quiet as she looks down at her sneaker toes. “You think we could find all that?”

“I think we won’t know what we’ll find until we go looking.” Dina rocks back on her heels. “Why didn’t anyone try and figure out anything before?”

Ellie shrugs. “She was pretty sick when she first got here, and I guess Maria and Tommy thought it was better to focus on her getting better than leaving her to find out where she’d come from.”

“But _we_ can go.”

“We can… try to figure it out.”

“You sound unsure.”

“I _am_ unsure.”

“Because we fucked up today?”

Ellie looks up into Dina’s dark eyes. “Because I don’t want to lose her.”

Dina’s expression softens.

“If people here found out Birdie can just… shoot ice out of her hands, enough to kill a grown man… they’d never look at her the same way again. It wouldn’t matter to them that it makes her sick after it happens, that her muscles lock up and she pukes - the only thing they’d see is a murderer. They wouldn’t trust Maria anymore, since Maria’s the one who fought for Birdie to stay here.” Ellie shakes her head. “Birdie’s not a murderer. Out of everyone here, there’s plenty of us who’ve done things…”

Dina takes Ellie’s hand.

“... but not her.”

“So let’s go get information, figure out how to help her - maybe even make it all stop. The worst thing that could happen is we find nothing and have to spend several days alone with each other in the wilderness.”

“And _this_ is where your plans usually end up.”

“What can I say? I’m a simple woman.”

* * *

_The second time it happens, it doesn’t happen without side effects._

_Maria becomes convinced that Birdie only has partial eyesight, and not a great deal of peripheral vision, which is why the rabbit scared her so much. Tommy thinks it’s just because she’d never seen a rabbit before. He hunts down a book with animals in it and spends time reading it to Birdie every day, showing her each of the pictures. To her credit, Birdie remains actively engaged throughout their reading sessions, as though she’s going to be quizzed later on the names and shapes of the animals._

_When she starts to paint and draw, Birdie never creates animals, though. Or really, any recognizable objects. Her artwork is primarily focused on swooping lines of color, emanating outwards from a single point. In the corner she always paints the same circle with tight lines inside it._

_It takes a few drawings for Maria to realize Birdie’s drawing the icon on the other side of her “name tag” necklace._

_On a crisp fall night they go on a walk through town - the three of them and Ellie and Joel. Throughout their stroll various town members come up to talk to Maria and Tommy, and they eventually tell Ellie and Joel to keep going with Birdie and take her back home. The trip takes them past a wooded grove and a stream, something that looks particularly picturesque with the fall leaves hanging orange and red and yellow._

_Ellie focuses on singing to Birdie, trying to get her to mimic some of the sounds. Besides the clicking and the three “words” she speaks, Birdie has attempted to pick up humming and whistling to round out her vocalizations. Ellie likes to vary up the songs, seeing what will stick._

_They’re partway through “Yankee Doodle” when Birdie freezes on the path, her head coming up sharply._

_A deer is a few feet away, drinking from the stream. It raises its head as they approach, but it never gets a chance to jump away. Birdie’s hand jerks away from her body and Joel and Ellie both see a spear of ice flash through the air, driven directly into the deer’s chest._

_Seconds later, as they’re still trying to figure out exactly what to do, Birdie sways on her feet, clicking in a horrified tone. She reaches out towards Ellie, grabs onto Ellie’s shirt, and goes limp._

_Joel grabs up Birdie, Ellie runs to get Tommy and Maria. Birdie goes through spasm after spasm, sweating, nearly punching herself in the head with seizure-rigid hands, knees jerking tightly into her stomach. She stops breathing for almost a minute and doesn’t start again until Maria jams her knuckles into Birdie’s sternum. Bluish-lipped, Birdie takes a breath in, only to start to gag and heave; vomiting starts seconds later._

_It lasts twenty-five minutes and every single one of those minutes is too long._

_Later Ellie will overhear Maria telling Tommy that she wasn’t sure Birdie would make it._

_Ellie wasn’t sure either, and she hates herself for feeling that way._

* * *

They dig out all the maps they can find of the general area and spread them out on Ellie’s desk.

“Okay,” Dina says. “Let’s think this through. How far is Birdie capable of walking?”

“Theoretically as far as she wants, but it would take her a long time.”

Dina rolls her eyes. “Let me narrow that down. How far could Birdie walk in the snowstorm that was happening when Joel and Tommy found her?”

“Not very far,” Ellie has to admit.

“Let’s call it… five miles.”

“Why?”

“For the sake of argument.” Dina brings up a protractor and a pencil. “Now, we know where she was found, so we can generally estimate the direction she came from.”

She opens the protractor and draws a triangle on the top map. “This is our general searching area.”

Ellie traces one of the lines. “What happens if someone dropped her off?”

Dina looks up.

“She could have been with someone from the facility who brought her miles and miles to drop her off just outside the city. We might never find it.”

“You seem to be missing the part where we get to spend time alone in the wilderness.”

“And you know I like that, but…” Ellie rubs her forehead. “What if we miss something while we’re gone?”

“Like the Harvest Dance?”

Ellie has to smile at that; last year’s Harvest Dance was marred by nearly everyone on the planning committee getting the flu, leaving a ramshackle group of other citizens to put it together, which led to lackluster decorations and more liquor in the punch than was strictly necessary. “Hey, I heard they’re really going to try their best this year. And if we’re still gone by the Harvest Dance, we’re probably not coming back. That’s a ways off.”

“Oh, you want to run off with me?” Dina grins, her eyes sparkling.

“I mean, what if we miss something with Birdie?” Ellie says, firmly _not_ answering that question.

Dina sobers.

“If she… if she has to… if she gets sick again,” Ellie says, “and it’s worse, worse than this time, which was already really bad…”

Something in her freezes and she pushes her hands down hard on the table, trying to use the sensation of palms against paper to distract her from thoughts of Birdie suffering. Of Birdie dying, a look of terror on her face, for there’s no possible way Birdie’s limited understanding of the world extended itself to comprehending her own pain or death. Of Maria and Tommy’s faces upon losing their beloved adopted daughter. Of her own life without Birdie, of never seeing Birdie’s smile light up a room again or hearing _Ah-eeh?_ and knowing it’s meant just for her.

Ellie’s chest aches. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

Dina nods. “Sure. Of course.”

She kisses Ellie on the cheek. They say their goodbyes on the porch. Ellie stands looking out at the night. There’s something still hollow under her sternum and she can’t shake the feeling of missing something.

Unsure of where her feet are taking her, she walks back across town to Tommy and Maria’s. Maria answers the door to her drawn face. “What’s going on?”

“I need… I need to…” But there aren’t any words.

Maria pulls Ellie in for a hug. Ellie rests her cheek on Maria’s shoulder. There’s nothing quite like an embrace; it feels like coming home. She lets the tension in her body release and closes her eyes.

“Do you want to stay here tonight?” Maria asks softly.

Without opening her eyes, Ellie nods.

“Okay.”

Maria gives her a pillow and a blanket; Ellie slips into Birdie’s room and watches the girl sleep for a few beats. Birdie is curled up small, her hands wrapped around the little stuffed bird. Her face is flushed and little wisps of red hair stick to her forehead. In the soft light of the lamp on the bedside table, Birdie looks peaceful.

Ellie kicks off her sneakers and crawls into bed next to Birdie. Birdie sighs and rolls towards her. Ellie kisses Birdie’s forehead. “I’m sorry about today,” she whispers. “I want to make things better for you.”

She pulls up her blanket and turns off the light on the bedside table, then turns back towards Birdie, intending to close her eyes and try to fall asleep.

Instead she sees a soft glow emanating up from near the neckline of Birdie’s nightgown. Confused, Ellie reaches towards it and discovers Birdie’s “name tag” necklace, now emitting a faint pinkish glow. Ellie gently frees it from around Birdie’s neck and brings it closer.

B1RD1, Birdie’s “designation,” is written on one side. The other side features the same logo with twisting lines inside a circle; Ellie’s seen it multiple times on Birdie’s artwork. The circle now emanates the gentle pink glow. Ellie works her fingers around the tag, trying to figure out how to open it, trying to find the source of the glow.

Eventually her fingernail slides into what seems like a hinge, and she pulls it up. It doesn’t come apart easily, but when it does, the glow pours out into the room.

The pink light paints itself across the room, wobbling as though it’s some sort of gelatin newly released from a mold. As it settles it sharpens into a straight line with a pointed end, almost like an arrow, streaming directly towards the far corner of the room.

Ellie sits up and turns the tag towards her, trying to see where the light’s coming from. As she does, the light repositions itself, wobbling once more until it’s focused on the corner once more.

She turns it again.

The light wobbles and re-centers.

Ellie closes the top over the tag, drawing the light down into its single circle. She waits a few beats, then pops the cover open again, keeping the tag tucked into her body.

The light flares, wobbles, and points directly into her shoulder. She raises it, and it pushes into the far corner of the room once more.

As the room shines like a beacon, Ellie suddenly realizes what the tag’s been hiding the whole time.

* * *

“It’s a compass.”

“What?” Dina blinks sleepily, looking at Ellie, who’s bouncing on the balls of her toes on the porch. “What are you talking about?”

Ellie takes the tag from her pocket, holds it up to Dina, then opens it. Immediately the pink light emerges, solidifies itself into a thick beam, and points towards the woods.

Dina’s eyes widen. “It’s a compass.”

Ellie grins, her face bright in the light of the compass. “We’re going to find Birdie’s people.”

As sleepy as she is, Dina finds her own lips curving into a matching grin. “We’re going to find Birdie’s people.”

* * *

_She lays in the dark in a puddle of her own vomit, trying not to move or make any noise. She blinks slowly, as if even that will attract attention. Her clothes, soaked with saliva, vomit, and several other less palatable fluids, are drying slowly against her cold body. She bites her lips - there’s noise in her and she wants to let it out._

_There’s noise all around her. The wild cries and clicks never truly stop; they’re searching, always searching, but for what she cannot say. Sometimes it’s her they’re looking for, sometimes she wakes to find a misshapen face looming over hers, gnarled hands touching her head, her face, clicking at her like she’s one of them._

_Maybe she is._

_There are voices, too, but she hears them only from a distance. The voices are confused about what to do with her._

_“... didn’t think she’d live this long, and…”_

_“... can’t very well let her_ _go_ _…”_

_“... hasn’t turned…”_

_“But you’ve heard her click, what’s that -?”_

_She isn’t always in the dark. Sometimes the lights are too bright and she has to keep her eyes closed. That’s when they put the food into her cage; she crawls forward blindly and scoops it into her mouth as fast as she can, fingers crowding into her mouth in her haste to get all of it. She doesn’t know what she’s eating and it honestly doesn’t matter. It never stays in her mouth long enough for her to even taste it._

_“You think there’s others out there like her?”_

_“_ _Nobody’s_ _like her.”_

_Sometimes they take her out of her cage. She doesn’t stay quiet when they do that. She screams and clicks and writhes against them. They’re blurry, insubstantial figures to her light-sensitive eyes but she can see enough to try to get away from them._

_They strap her to a table. There’s pain in her arms, needle-like pain. Blurry faces over hers making promises she doesn’t understand. There’s pain all through her arms, like something’s flooding into her body. There’s a whistle as something flies through the air and slams into her legs, over and over._

_“... think we’ve proven she won’t be able to walk, don’t you…”_

_“... haven’t gotten results yet.”_

_She screams and screams, her throat raw, tries to punch herself in the head to make the pain stop._

_The pain never stops, but one day she fights back, and that’s a feeling that transcends pain altogether._

* * *

They leave early in the morning, before Birdie’s awake. Joel, Maria, and Tommy stand outside Tommy and Maria’s house, watching as Ellie and Dina lash supplies to the horses. When at last there’s nothing more to pack, Ellie turns back to Maria and hands her the tag.

“You don’t want this?” Maria asks.

“I marked it on both our compasses and Dina marked the direction on the map,” Ellie says. “I don’t want to take it from her.”

“You get into trouble, you let the horses go,” Tommy says. “They’ll find their way back to us, or they won’t. Don’t sacrifice yourselves for horses.”

“Don’t sacrifice yourself for _anything,”_ Maria says firmly. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I know,” Ellie says. “But I don’t think I could forgive myself if I didn’t at least… go and look.”

Joel doesn’t say anything until Dina’s up on her horse and Ellie’s preparing to mount hers. He touches her shoulder; she turns towards him and he hugs her. “Stay together. Stay out of trouble. Come home.”

With that he lets her go and Ellie hooks her foot into the stirrup, swinging herself up onto the horse’s back.

Ellie’s not sure if Dina looks back, but she does, and sees Maria, Tommy, and Joel standing in the cool morning, watching as they make their way out of town. She can’t parse the looks on their faces - it’s not hope, exactly, but it’s not disapproval. Maybe it is hope. Ellie isn’t quite sure what that looks like when it comes to Birdie.

They ride for hours, until the sun is high overhead, following the tracking marked on their compasses. Dina sings and convinces Ellie to join in; for a while they trade song verses back and forth as the trees sway and the sun paints it all with golden creamy light.

When they’re hungry they stop for lunch and decide to have a rest as well, laying on their backs in some grass, fingers twined together. Dina twiddles a daisy between her fingers and then brushes it over Ellie’s face.

“You think we’re going to find something?” Dina asks softly, rolling over to look at Ellie.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you _want_ us to find something?”

“Not if it’s going to hurt Birdie.” Ellie closes her eyes and listens to the grasshoppers buzzing, the birds singing, loving the soft kisses of the daisy petals on her cheek. “I just want her to be happy. She deserves to be happy.”

“She does,” Dina agrees.

Back up on the horses, they ride on, continuing to follow the compasses. The journey takes them through wooded areas and open fields, over paved roads and small rivers, and, as the sun goes down, into a small valley. They see no other people and very few animals.

Close to sunset they make camp in the valley. Ellie lights the fire and Dina sets up their small tent, pronouncing it “cozy.” For a while they luxuriate in the small tasks of the camp: heating their food, eating it while sitting knee-to-knee on a log, cleaning up, and finally, resting while cuddled up in a blanket, just watching the fire.

“Do you want to go to sleep?” Dina asks at last. “I’m tired.”

“You want me to take first watch?”

“I think we’re safe.”

Something fizzles across Ellie’s mind, but she pushes it away. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“We haven’t seen anyone else all day,” Dina points out.

Ellie smiles. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s just… it’s confirmed my love for you.” Dina leans in and kisses Ellie on the cheek.

“Gross.”

“You love it.”

They douse the fire and crawl into the tent, curling up facing each other, snuggled under blankets that smell like home.

“You realize that today we’ve gone further than that five miles we talked about,” Dina says. “Like, a _lot_ further. Birdie never could have walked this far in the snow.”

“So someone brought her,” Ellie says. “Someone was taking her somewhere, and she… got loose.”

“Or they were bringing her to Jackson.”

“Why would they bring her to Jackson?”

“Maybe they wanted to get her out of… wherever she was. Maybe they realized she didn’t deserve to be kept in a lab.”

“Then why didn’t they stay with her?”

“Guilt?”

“So… no idea.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Adventures are about discovery.” Dina squeezes Ellie’s hand.

“What if we don’t discover anything?”

“... it’s still an adventure. Don’t ask me how, I don’t make the rules.”

Ellie smiles. She squeezes back, sleepy and warm.

The darkness of the tent swallows her up, and she sleeps.

* * *

They come upon a complex of buildings shortly after noon on their second day of riding. It’s raining; the leaves of the trees are deep green and slick, the pavement under the horses’ hooves splashing water up into the warm air. The buildings themselves rise out of the greenery around them, all glass and steel, like mirrors reflecting back the gray sky. As a complex the buildings seem to hunch in on each other, a series of cubes tumbling towards the smallest one. It’s a shock to see all the sharp right angles of their windows in contrast to the bowing limbs of the trees surrounding.

Ellie slows her horse to a stop and takes a pair of binoculars out of her rain slicker pocket. She focuses on the buildings, looking for movement, looking for a sign of the buildings’ purpose.

“You think this is it?” Dina asks.

“I think it’s a little weird that this is out here in the exact direction we were headed.” Ellie slowly scans the buildings’ exterior. “I can’t see anything from out here. We need to get closer.”

They tie the horses, loosely, to some low-hanging branches in a partially-hidden grove. It’s not an ideal location, and Ellie hates leaving them, but she knows they’ll move faster and quieter on foot.

Once the horses are secured, they cross the cracked highway and slide down a grassy hill on the far side, shoes slipping on the wet grass. Rows of tall bushes meet them; through the branches Ellie spots a chain-link fence. She takes out her binoculars again. This time she easily spots movement: through tall floor-to-ceiling windows, she can see at least four people standing in a semi-circle around a desk. All but one are wearing lab coats.

“We’ve either got doctors or people who just like dressing like them,” Ellie reports to Dina.

“Either way, not great,” Dina opines.

Ellie lowers the binoculars. “What?”

“Well, they’re either doctors out here in a weird spaceship-like compound doing bizarre experiments on people like Birdie, or they just like to wear lab coats. Have you ever worn one of those? Not flattering.”

Smiling slightly, Ellie raises the binoculars and scans the rest of the buildings. “I see some… generators, maybe? Over there on the far end of the first building. We could hop up on there, get on the roof, find access that way.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They hug the chain-link fence as they move towards the complex, weaving between the bushes, blending in with the leafy boughs in their dark green rain slickers. The fence ends abruptly at a well-manicured gravel driveway, a carved sign next to it declaring _Future Survival Enterprises._ Next to the words is a very familiar symbol: a circle with intertwining lines inside.

“Ominous,” Dina says.

 _“Future Survival,”_ Ellie mutters. “Is that what they thought they were doing to Birdie? Giving her a future?”

“No,” Dina says. “Tommy and Maria did that. _You_ did that.”

She squeezes Ellie’s hand.

“Well, you helped.”

“I try.” Dina grins. She turns her head and looks across the driveway, where two motorized carts sit under a small carport. An armed man stands just outside what looks to be the main door. “Whatever they’re up to out here, it looks pretty serious.”

“If they’re the ones responsible for hurting Birdie, I want to burn it all down.”

They sneak past the front entrance and hang a left on the far side of the shortest building in the compound. Ellie boosts Dina up onto one of the large generator units, and Dina hauls Ellie up beside her. They both scramble up onto the roof from there, landing flat on their bellies on the slightly gravelly roof tile, Dina harder than Ellie.

“Do you see any way in?” Dina asks, raising her head.

“There’s a door over there,” Ellie says as she pushes herself up.

Dina gets to her feet. “I know you want to burn this place down, but what else do you want to get out of here?”

Ellie readjusts her backpack. “I want… records. I want information on what they did to Birdie. I want to know why she is the way she is. And if the person who tried to get her to Jackson is here… I want to know why they just dumped her. Why she wasn’t worth bringing all the way to town, where somebody would have kept her safe immediately, rather than hoping we’d find her in a blizzard.”

“‘Cause Maria would have shot them?”

“She wouldn’t have,” Ellie protests. “If they’d told her the truth… maybe she wouldn’t have let _them_ stay, but she would have kept Birdie.”

“Yeah, she does love that little rascal.”

They approach the door. Ellie hesitantly tries the knob. Unlocked.

“You ready?” Dina asks softly.

Ellie nods. She opens the door and they look down a darkened flight of stairs.

“Let’s do this.”

* * *

_Birdie has three words she can say._

_Eee-ahh_ _is for Maria._

_Bah-bah_ _is for Tommy._

_Ahh-eeh_ _is for Ellie._

 _There aren’t words for everything else she_ _wants_ _to say._

_She watches the world go by and she knows there are words for everything she sees, every person, every animal, every building and every plant. She understands most of them; she’s learned how to pair names with people, she knows which dogs will let her pet them and which ones don’t care for her. She knows the building where her things are is called “home,” which is confusing because Maria and Tommy have a “home” but Ellie also has a “home.” (Sometimes she gets to go there, and watch movies, and snuggle, and be told she can’t touch certain things, which is okay, because some things are special.) Are they both “home”? Is one better than the others?_

_She hears the word “love” a lot. Maria loves Tommy. Tommy loves Maria. They both say they love her. Ellie says it too - sometimes she’s talking to Birdie, sometimes to Dina._

_If there were any words Birdie could say besides her three, that’d be the one she’d want. Sometimes when she’s alone she practices it. She can hear it in her head in other people’s voices, voices that don’t sound like her twisted syllables, and she wants to say it. But her mouth, her throat, her tongue won’t let her._ _Aaah,_ _she says._ _Aaah_ _, she repeats, clenching her hands into fists. But it sounds like all of the other un-words she says._

 _She wants to say it, but she can’t. Instead she figures she’ll just have to_ _show_ _love. Lots of people do that in different ways. Ellie plays her guitar for Dina. Maria bakes bread for Tommy. They all hug. Lots of hugging. (Sometimes too much, and Birdie has to go limp and flop on the floor to tell them she’s done with all that. Then they all laugh and Tommy tickles her.) Joel takes her for walks and tells her stories about lots of different things; he holds her hand and she can feel love in that. A lady in town made Birdie a little bird - that’s love too._

_New crayons are love. Pancakes are love._

_Sunshine on her face is love._

_Naps are love._

_Having enough to eat is love._

_Not being hurt is love._

_And if she has all those things, maybe it’s okay that she only has three words._


	2. Chapter 2

They creep quietly down the stairs. At the bottom is a closed door. Ellie bends down and puts her ear to the door, listening to what might be on the other side. She stands up and shakes her head. “I don’t hear anything,” she whispers.

Dina opens the door and Ellie slips through, checking side-to-side with her pistol. Nothing comes towards them, and once Dina closes the door, both girls take a moment to survey their surroundings.

They’re in an institutionally-bland corridor: white tile floor, beige walls, gray steel doors. Each of the doors has a thick seal around it; there’s a red light over each one. None of the red lights are lit. Everything looks a little dull, a little dusty.

Ellie approaches the closest door and stands on her tiptoes to see through the small square window in it. “Nothing,” she whispers. “Just a desk and a chair.”

Dina goes up to the next one; it takes a few hops for her to see through the glass, but eventually she reports, “Empty. It looks like there was something big on the floor in there, though - there’s drag marks on the floor.”

They check the other doors and find all of the rooms on this top floor empty of anything significant, just more furniture. No filing cabinets, no experiments going on, nothing more interesting than a few well-padded desk chairs and, in one office, an impressively sprawling fern.

“We have to go downstairs,” Ellie says. She’s surprised at how steady her voice is, how steady her hands are. She was expecting more - expecting armed guards and vicious scientists and reams of paperwork detailing torture. This looks like countless other empty office buildings she’d gone through on patrols, so bland as to be anonymous. She _wants_ more - she wants something she can expend her rage into destroying, cleansing, purifying, _solving._

Dina nods and they move to the end of the hallway, where a set of double doors waits. Through the doors’ small windows they can see a bland cement staircase leading downwards.

As Dina’s about to push the door open Ellie freezes. She falters, her hands locking tight around her pistol, eyes closing. It’s enough to bring her to a standstill. Something cold wraps around her chest. She can’t take another step forward. It isn’t right - they shouldn’t be here - she doesn’t want to hurt anyone else but - 

“Ell.”

Ellie forces herself to breathe. It hurts. She thinks of Birdie’s face, of Birdie’s wondering, awed eyes as they gaze upon Christmas lights or a purring cat, of Birdie’s hand in hers, of Birdie asleep on Ellie’s bed after a session of video games and cookie-eating. The next breath hurts less. She sees Birdie dancing with Joel at a town dance, Birdie in Tommy’s arms asleep on his shoulder, Birdie snuggled up in Maria’s lap gently stroking Maria’s face. One more breath and the cold in her lungs dissipates. Something like strength grips her spine and her locked wrists relax.

“Sorry,” Ellie mumbles. “I just… got scared.”

“Well, knock that shit off,” Dina says, her usual grin moving her lips upwards. “You’re supposed to be the brave one here, remember?”

“What does that make you?”

“I’m obviously the pretty one.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Made you smile, though, didn’t it?”

“You’re the worst.”

Ellie opens the door and they proceed down the stairs.

* * *

Maria lays in Birdie’s bed, watching her daughter sleep. It’s been a day and a half since the girls left, and Birdie hasn’t spent much of that conscious. She slept through the entire first day, and now has only just begun to wake for short periods of time, enough for Maria to get her to drink some water or use the toilet, before immediately dropping back into slumber. When awake Birdie seems nearly drunk, leaning heavily on Maria to walk, eyes half-open, head hanging low as though it’s too heavy for her to hold up. Bruises dot Birdie’s body where her fists hit her torso, face, and legs during the seizure days before, and there’s a pulsing red sore in the middle of Birdie’s right hand, presumably where the ice bolt left her body, but the girl seems in no pain, just simply exhausted.

In sleep Birdie seems relaxed, and though Maria knows it’s a weird thing to appreciate, she loves to watch Birdie sleep. Birdie’s sleep is generally peaceful, her arms and legs both relaxing from the spasms that hit them throughout a usual day, causing her arms to draw into her body and her legs to jerk and stab at the ground. Maria isn’t sure if Birdie dreams or, if so, what Birdie dreams about, but the girl’s face stays smooth and her brow unfurrowed, which is absolutely progress from the first few months Birdie lived with them. No one slept much during Birdie’s acclimation to Jackson.

Maria strokes Birdie’s forehead and watches Birdie’s eyes open slightly. “My sweet girl,” Maria says softly. “I brought you some more water.”

One of Birdie’s hands comes up, lazily drifting towards Maria’s face, and gently touches Maria’s cheek. _“Eee-ahh,”_ she whispers.

“Can I help you sit up?”

Birdie gives a short nod, and Maria carefully slides Birdie into a seated position. Birdie tries to hold herself up and slumps forward, trying to push her hands down into the bed to keep her upright at least a little.

Maria smiles and puts her arm around Birdie, bringing up the cup of water to Birdie’s lips at the same time. Birdie reaches for the cup and gets one of her curled hands around it; she grabs it and yanks it towards her mouth, water sloshing over the sides.

“Easy, easy,” Maria murmurs, and guides the cup.

Birdie takes a few sips and lets Maria take the cup away. She already looks drowsy again.

“Birdie,” Maria says, setting the cup on the bedside table, “do you remember much about where you were before you came to live with Tommy and me?”

Birdie leans against Maria, twining her fingers in Maria’s shirt. She seems to think about the question, biting her lip. Then she nods.

“It was pretty rough, huh?”

Birdie nods again.

Maria strokes Birdie’s hair and feels the girl snuggle closer to her. “Do you like being here with us?”

 _“Eee-ah,”_ Birdie says, in a tone of voice that suggests Maria is an idiot for even asking.

“Okay, okay,” Maria says, smiling. “Sometimes I just need to make sure. Because if you’re not happy here, you let us know.”

Birdie sighs with happiness. Her eyes droop closed.

“Have a good sleep, my love,” Maria says. She kisses Birdie’s forehead. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

* * *

The stairs drop them out into a nondescript landing with a set of gray double doors like the ones on the floor above. Ellie peers through the doors’ windows, seeing a hallway nearly identical to the one they’d just traversed. Unlike the hall above, though, two of the rooms have the red lights over their doors lit.

“Keep a lookout,” Ellie whispers to Dina.

Dina nods.

Ellie opens the door and walks into the hallway. Keeping low, near the wall, she walks towards the first red-lit door. As she nears it she stands up and looks in the window.

What she sees takes her breath away. The room behind the glass is huge and filled with clickers. They’re all standing still, eerily still. They all have thick leather cuffs on one wrist. And they’re all wearing clothes - loose long-sleeved tops and stretchy pants. It’s a giant group of clickers in pajamas, and Ellie can’t figure out whether to laugh or run.

The hallway door opens and she whips around, gun raised, but it’s only Dina.

“What happened to keeping a watch?” Ellie whispers.

“The look on your face suggests there’s something I need to see going on in that room,” Dina answers. She gets on her tiptoes and looks through the window. “Are those…?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And they’re…”

“Yep.”

Dina lets out a low whistle. “What else do you think they’ve trained them to do?”

“Trained them to…”

“You don’t think the _scientists_ put the pajamas _on_ the clickers, do you?”

Ellie has to admit that would be a bit ridiculous, but the alternative - that the clickers put the pajamas on themselves - is also ludicrous. “That looks like what Birdie was wearing when Joel and Tommy found her,” she says instead.

“So we’ve found where she learned her fashion style,” Dina says. “I guess that’s good.”

“You’re really going to joke your way through this, huh?”

“Is it keeping you from running in terror?”

“Kind of.”

“Then I guess I’ll keep it up.”

A bell rings and all of the clickers in the room look up. The wall on the far side of the room raises, opening to another space beyond. The bell continues to clang and the clickers shuffle forward and through the open wall, until they’re all into the next space. Then the wall slides back down, the bell stops ringing, and the red light above the door in the hallway goes off.

“This is super fucking weird,” Dina says.

Ellie crosses the hallway to the other red-lit door and looks in. This room is smaller and divided into cells with the aid of Plexiglas walls. There are more clickers in the cells, still dressed in pajamas with a cuff locked around one wrist, but these ones seem… smaller. More fragile. Some are huddled on the floor of their cells, sleeping or sitting cross-legged. One is curled into the fetal position. One rocks back and forth on their feet, hands curled into their body, mournfully clicking. One is beating their head against the wall of the cell, over and over. She hears a dull _thump - thump - thump,_ like a heartbeat. Flecks of flesh and blood splatter the cell wall.

She frowns, mentally comparing the size of these little clickers to Birdie’s frame. While the doctor in the clinic in Jackson hadn’t been able to specify exactly how old Birdie was, he’d guessed she was maybe fifteen. It was hard to tell with the bowing of her legs and the emaciated state she’d been found in, but Birdie had adult teeth and her growth plates were closed. She was just a small individual. These smaller clickers look close to Birdie’s height.

She sees no one who looks like Birdie. These are clearly clickers, growths twisting their faces, the infection deforming their arms and legs. For all of her clicker-esque traits, Birdie has no growths, just the healed-over bite on her arm. But while Jackson’s doctor said the bowing in Birdie’s legs was mostly likely from them being broken repeatedly - _to keep her from running?_ Ellie wonders -, Birdie’s arms and legs still maintain the herky-jerky quality of many clickers.

“How old do you think they are?”

Ellie jumps and looks over to see Dina peering through the window next to her. “Birdie’s age?” she guesses.

“There’s an empty cell in the corner. You think that’s where Birdie lived?”

“Birdie’s been with us for more than a year,” Ellie reminds Dina. “Why would they keep the cell empty?”

Dina shrugs. “Maybe they’re still trying to find someone to fill it.”

Ellie tears her eyes away from the heartbreaking scene - yes, heartbreaking, despite all of the inherent danger and terror contained in a room full of clickers - and turns her attention to one of the other doors in the hallway. The room beyond looks like a typical office: desk, chair, filing cabinets. And at the desk, a scientist in a white coat. He’s dark haired, skinny, one foot tapping the floor to some unheard rhythm, and best of all, he’s alone, his head bent over some paperwork.

“I’m going in,” Ellie whispers.

“Wait, should we just… go in there?”

“He’s alone,” Ellie says.

“What if he calls for reinforcements?”

“What do you think you’re here for?”

“Besides the jokes and good looks?”

Ellie gives Dina a half-grin. “I trust you.”

“That was your first mistake.”

Ellie gently pulls on the door handle. With a soft _shuck,_ the door opens towards her. The man at the desk doesn’t look up. Ellie keeps low, walking quietly. When she’s mere feet from the scientist, she cocks her pistol.

The noise is enough to get his attention, and he whips his head towards the gun-toting young woman to his left. His hands go up automatically. “Whoa! Whoa! Hey!”

“Don’t move,” Ellie says, her voice low and firm. “Is there anyone who’s going to be checking on you in the next few minutes?”

He shakes his head. “No! No, I swear!”

“Okay. Then we’re going to talk for a little bit. I need some information.”

“How did you get in here?”

“The door was unlocked.” Ellie takes another step towards him. “Do you have any weapons?”

“No!”

“I’m going to trust you on that one...” Ellie gets closer, close enough to see the badge clipped to his lab coat pocket. “... Dan.”

His hands still in the air, eyes wide, he watches her nervously.

“What kind of experiments are done here, Dan?”

“Uh - we - uh - we’re working to make - uh…” He grimaces, as though he doesn’t want to answer. “... fighters. Soldiers. Weaponized infected.”

“Soldiers for who?”

“Whoever can pay us.”

“And that is?”

“I mean, we have a couple of different clients right now, but…” He jerks his head to the right, and for the first time Ellie realizes this office looks out into the room with the small clickers in cells. “... I mean, there’s a couple different groups.”

“And these ones?”

“What about them?”

“They’re small. These look like kids.”

“I mean, they’re… they’re _younger,”_ Dan offers.

“And what do you do to these _younger_ ones?”

“We… you know… the same stuff we do to all of them.”

“Which is?”

Dan bites his lip.

 _“Which is?”_ Ellie repeats, raising her voice slightly.

“It’s… it’s a lot of stuff. Things to make them stronger, to make them faster, to make them feel less pain, to make them controllable. Some of them get other… upgrades.”

“Do you keep records of everything you do here?”

Dan nods.

“Where?”

“Where do we keep the…?”

“The records, Dan. Where do you keep the records?”

“In the basement.”

“If I asked you to find the records for a specific… patient… could you do that?”

“I’d need to know -”

“B-one-R-D-one,” Ellie says.

Dan freezes. His face goes pale.

“She _was_ here,” Ellie breathes.

“Y-you know where…?” Dan stares at her. “You’ve… _seen_ her?”

“Where are her records, Dan?”

“In the basement. With the others. But you’ve -”

“How do we get there without being seen?”

“You’re going to need a key card,” Dan says. He seems to be operating on auto-pilot, absolutely stunned. “The door’s on the main floor, next to the bathroom. And there might be… others down there.”

“Do you have a key card?”

Dan nods, staring up at Ellie.

She nods back at him.

“Oh!” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a white plastic rectangle, offering it to her.

Keeping her gun pointed at him, Ellie steps forward and takes it from his hand.

“Just tell me,” Dan says, as Ellie starts to back out of the room, “that she hasn’t hurt anyone yet.”

Ellie slips the key card into her pocket. “A few,” she says. “No one who didn’t deserve it. And based on what you’re doing here and what you did to her… well, just be grateful she doesn’t know where you are.”

She closes the door on the scientist.

* * *

Birdie’s head hurts. Her hand hurts. Her body feels heavy.

She opens her eyes. Maria is gone from her bedroom and she’s alone.

Birdie likes being alone, as little as she’s ever allowed to be. Usually there’s someone within arm’s reach of her, watching her, walking with her, making sure she doesn’t…

… doesn’t what? She’s never thought about it. Doesn’t get into trouble? Doesn’t _cause_ trouble? Doesn’t run away? Doesn’t...

_Doesn’t kill someone._

The thought punches her in the throat and she lets out a whimper.

_It’s what you were made for. Doesn’t matter how bad you are at it, it’s in your veins, in your bones, in your heart._

Birdie grabs onto her little bird toy and squeezes. Her head hurts more, aching like it’ll split open. She bites her lip and tries not to cry.

_What else could you be? You came from the monster factory, from the depths of hell, and you think you get to just… live an ordinary life?_

The pressure in her head is too much. Birdie screams, just a little, just trying to let off the excess fury and pain bottled up inside.

There are two problems with that, she realizes nearly immediately. The first is that the scream tastes so good, feels so warm in her rib cage, that she doesn’t want to stop.

The second is that it brings Maria at a run, worry on her face, and Birdie can’t do anything but scream, tears streaming down her face, directly at someone who’s given up so much to keep her safe. The scream is too good, too warm, too safe to stop.

“Birdie,” Maria says, and Birdie somehow hears her over the scream and the pulsing in her head and the pain all over her body. “Birdie, it’s okay. You’re safe. You’re home.”

The scream swallows up Birdie’s body and she feels her hands get cold. Immediately she turns them on herself, balling her hands into fists and slamming them into her knees. Ice builds on her knuckles, cracking and shattering with every hit. Birdie chokes on her own freezing breath and the scream dies, turning into stuttery gulps. _“Uck,”_ she wheezes. _“Uck. Uck.”_

“Breathe,” Maria says, somewhere beyond Birdie’s panic and terror and anger. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Birdie chokes on her last syllable and her body goes limp with pain and exhaustion; she collapses backward onto the bed, staring up at Maria, snot and little rivulets of icy tears running down her face. Waiting for Maria to hit her, to punish her, to yell at her, to call her _bad,_ to throw her away. To be just like every other adult who took care of her.

But Maria scoops Birdie into her arms and cradles her. Gently. Carefully.

And then she starts to sing. _“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy… when skies are gray…”_

The cold flows away. Warmth comes back into her body. The choking, gagging noises falling from her mouth slow and then stop. Birdie tries to reach up and grab onto Maria but her body’s not listening to her anymore.

_“You’ll always know, dear, how much I love you - because I tell you every day.”_

Birdie wants to say _love_ \- she wants it so badly. _“Uhh,”_ she whispers. _“Uhh…”_

Maria kisses her forehead and Birdie simply weeps, completely confused as to how she became so lucky as to fall into the lives of people who care about her, who despite her monstrous beginnings somehow love her so purely.

And Maria holds her tightly when she falls back to sleep, this time refusing to leave Birdie’s side.

* * *

The first floor is a big, open room - a remnant from the days when the buildings were obviously part of some sort of office complex and this was a common space like a lunchroom or a conference room. There are four scientists on the first floor, sitting at a table. There’s one guard in the corner, his pistol obvious on his hip; he stands at the door, looking outside.

“We take him out first,” Ellie says softly. “The rest of them shouldn’t put up a fight.”

Dina nods. “Do you want to tie the scientists up?”

Ellie frowns at her, confused.

“I mean, Maria forced some rope on me before we left and I’d hate to tell her we didn’t use it. She was really kind of pushy with it.”

“Let’s just see where things go,” Ellie says. “But I appreciate your willingness to contribute.”

She grabs her bow and an arrow from her backpack, getting ready to draw. “The guard first. Then the others.”

Dina nods.

Ellie takes a deep breath, and then returns Dina’s nod.

Dina opens the door to the large room before them.

Ellie draws.

That, of course, is when things all go to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.


	3. Chapter 3

The glass wall on the second floor, overlooking the main conference area, shatters and a tumble of bodies slams into the ground. Judging from the noises accompanying the calamity, at least one of those bodies belongs to a clicker.

Ellie hopes Dan isn’t one of them, and wonders why she cares so much about a scientist who admitted to being part of the group that tortured Birdie. As soon as the thought passes through her head it’s gone; she directs her bow towards the first clicker she sees, getting up, glass-spattered, screeching out into the room. The arrow sinks cleanly through the clicker’s face and it drops to the ground. She nocks another arrow.

The other two figures in the tussle get up, and Ellie sees one scientist - not Dan - and another clicker. As the scientist stands she wobbles, clearly confused and a little muddled from hitting the ground so hard. The clicker takes the opportunity to go for the woman.

Dina fires at it, winging the clicker in its shoulder. It screams in their direction. Dina shoots again and the clicker’s head explodes.

“A little rusty,” Dina says as the noise of the shots die out.

The female scientist turns towards Ellie and Dina.

“Fuck, we didn’t plan for this part,” Dina says.

The four scientists at the table are on their feet, running towards their colleague. “Helen! What happened?”

“The… the containment field,” the woman stutters, her eyes still on Ellie and Dina. “Dan was… he ran in yelling about…”

Ellie takes a step backwards, closer to Dina, still holding her bow at the ready.

From the door, the guard walks forward.

Helen points at Ellie and Dina. “They found her.”

All of the other scientists stop and turn towards the girls. From the broken wall above comes a tentative series of clicks and the sound of inquisitive feet moving towards the open area.

“That can’t be true,” one of the scientists scoffs.

“They knew her designation,” Helen says harshly. “They have her.”

One of the scientists, a dark-skinned man, taller than the others, turns to look at Ellie and Dina. “Is that true?” he asks, his voice hushed. “You have B-one-R-D-one?”

The guard raises and cocks his gun.

“We can get her back,” one of the other scientists whispers. “We can… finish…”

“Shut up,” another hisses.

“But we _can,”_ the first replies. “We _can!_ You’re telling me you don’t want to -?”

 _“Erick!”_ Helen snaps. “Are you fucking serious?”

The screams of clickers from the broken-walled room above grow louder.

“She was our _best project,”_ Erick responds. “She was almost ready to -”

A clicker sprints out of the hole in the glass wall and tumbles down to the floor, sprawling in a heap of limbs and screaming.

Ellie takes the opportunity to shoot the guard in the shoulder. He lets out a yell and fires a shot off wildly.

The clicker gets to its feet and reels around towards the guard. The guard brings his gun back up and tries to shoot it, but his shot goes wide.

Dina fires and hits the clicker in the back of the neck before it can attack the guard. Panting, the guard sinks to the ground.

Erick, his eyes shining and his enthusiasm seemingly not dampened by the clicker attack, approaches the girls. “You have B-one. Can you bring her here?”

“No,” Ellie says simply.

His brow furrows. “What?”

“No,” Ellie repeats, just as simply.

“But she’s… not finished,” Erick says. “You have to…”

Ellie slowly puts her bow in her backpack. “She doesn’t belong to you anymore.”

“What he means…” one of the other scientists tries, “... is that she might… get sick. Or hurt. If we don’t… finish her treatment.”

“Are you serious?” Helen repeats. “The subjects broke the containment field and killed Dan, and you’re really trying to _bargain_ with these two?”

“We can get her back!” Erick protests.

“She’s _gone,”_ Helen says. “Let her go, for God’s sake, Erick. We have bigger issues.”

Screams and clicks echo from above.

“Like that,” Helen says. “Inez, Peter - will you get the guns? I think we’re going to have to cull Sector Two. Erick, get some bandages or something for Greg. At least get the arrow out of him.”

“That’s it?” Erick sounds stunned. “We just _let_ her _go?”_

“She’s been gone for more than a year,” Helen says. “The rest of us let her go a long time ago.”

“She was our best chance,” Erick pushes back. “We were meant to _do_ better things, and she was our _chance!”_

“Your chance for what?” Dina asks, stepping forward. “What was she your chance for?”

“To fucking _succeed!”_ Erick snaps.

“At what?” Dina prods, noting that Ellie’s gone quiet. “Succeed at what?”

“She was our best, our brightest,” Erick goes on, seemingly without much prodding. “She absorbed the elemental energy and it didn’t kill her - no, she learned how to _wield_ it! Whatever we threw at her, she still got back up! She could still _walk,_ even after all of it! All the drugs, all the physical trials, _everything._ The clickers paid no attention to her, like she was one of them, but she _never turned!_ She would have been exactly what our client was looking for and _you all_ know it” - he turns to look accusingly at all of his colleagues - “but now we’re stuck with the absolute brain trusts we’ve got upstairs who can, what, put on pajamas? Sometimes avoid hitting their heads against the wall? Walk forward when a bell rings? Yeah, some real good ones we’ve made there.”

“Erick,” Helen says, her voice low, a warning. “Stop now.”

“We could have _done it,”_ Erick bites out. “We could be _done_ here, gone home to our families, but she _disappeared_ and our chances went with her. And now these two know where she is and you’re just - what? Going to let them walk out of here?”

“What do you want to do to them?” one of the other scientists asks softly, and her tone makes it unclear if she’s supporting Helen or Erick.

“Make them take us to her,” Erick says firmly. “Bring her back here and _finish.”_

“That’s not going to happen,” Ellie says, looking him directly in the eyes.

“Someone’s going to come for her,” Erick says. “Someone’s going to want her, eventually, and they’ll come looking.”

“We want her,” Ellie says, unsure of how her voice is still remaining level, “and we’ll make sure that _if_ they come looking, they don’t find anything but us.”

She turns to look at the group of scientists and raises her voice. “Is that clear?”

Most of them nod. A few mumble “yes,” the word overshadowed by the clicks resonating from above. Only Erick, his eyes still blazing with some internal furor, refuses to answer.

“Get Maria’s rope,” Ellie says, not looking back at Erick. “Tie him up.”

“What?” Erick squawks.

The rest of the scientists are dispersing, off to try and save what’s left of their laboratory. The clicks are getting louder, hungrier, more desperate.

Ellie turns away from Erick and locates the door to the basement. She takes the keycard from her pocket and swipes it over the sensor next to the door, which clicks open. “Come on, Erick,” she says, raising her voice to be heard over the ever-rising calamity. “I’m guessing it’s a whole world of awful downstairs, and we’re going to need a tour guide.”

* * *

_It takes a long time for Tommy and Maria to get comfortable with the idea of leaving Birdie with anyone, even people they know well. For her first few months in Jackson, one of them is always with her, close enough to touch, even though they try not to touch her too much. Birdie is obviously hungry for non-painful physical contact, but is easily overwhelmed by too much attention - too much of any kind of stimulation seems to explode through her like circuits blowing in an old house. When she’s overstimulated she’ll flop to the floor and bang her head into it, over and over again, seemingly without feeling much pain, and becomes completely frenzied if anyone tries to stop her, turning the assault on them; her headbutting of Tommy becomes an oft-retold tale that, like the actual incident itself, becomes less painful over time._

_She is ferociously strong physically, despite her deformed legs and the tense way her body often jerks itself around, as is made eminently clear to her family one evening. Tommy and Maria are both suddenly needed at different spots in Jackson, and it’s decided then and there that it’s time for her first solo outing to Joel’s. It’s an interesting evening for a number of reasons._

_The first is that it’s raining heavily outside, a summer downpour with all the festivities of lightning and thunder - not Birdie’s first thunderstorm but close enough. The second is that while Joel and Ellie planned for just such a visit with Tommy and Maria for weeks, on the night of its sudden inception, Ellie has spent much of the last two days unable to keep anything in her stomach, as sick as Joel’s ever seen her. He’s worried as all get-out about her, and goes back and forth between her little apartment in the backyard and Birdie in the big house, trying to do what needs to be done for both of them._

_It’s obvious to Birdie that something is wrong. She enjoys Joel’s company and his guitar-playing and the little sips of milky coffee he gives her, but Ellie’s absence is confusing to her. When a neighbor stops by to talk to Joel, Birdie takes it upon herself to just… walk out of his house and find her Ellie._

_The night is dark and the wet on her face is definitely unpleasant (Birdie having decided that rain, out of all the new weather in her life, is_ _not_ _something she really needed in her life), but she knows where Ellie’s little house is. Unsteadily she walks out the back door of Joel’s house and down the stairs and across the slippy yard. She gets the door open and chatters, inquisitively, into the darkness._

_No response._

_Now completely fed up, Birdie makes her way inside. She hears water running. Feels water under her feet. That’s wrong. There aren’t puddles in Ellie’s little house. Puddles stay outside, with the bad rain._

_Birdie chirps out again, a little less inquisitive, a little more concerned. More water under her feet. She goes towards the sound of the running water. Streams cross the floor, pooling and puddling. "_ _Ah-eeh?_" _Birdie asks._

_The water gets louder as she approaches the bathroom door. It’s half-open; Birdie pushes it the rest of the way open and screams as she realizes what’s occurred: her Ellie is bobbing, face-down, in the tub._

_Birdie has seen this before - she’s seen it too many times - she’s_ _been_ _this before - pushed down - held down - unable to breathe - begging for air - and she screams, keeps screaming as she digs her twisty fingers into her Ellie’s shoulders, yanks her Ellie upright and out of the tub, pulling Ellie onto the floor, panting and screaming and sobbing and choking. She pushes down on Ellie’s chest as the water streams over them both._

_Her fists slam into Ellie’s body. She has no idea what she’s doing. She has only a vague memory of someone doing this to her, another time, another place, and -_

_Footsteps pound into the room, accompanied by loud voices. Birdie’s faintly aware of someone lifting her away from Ellie; she screams, whips around, and tries to bite them. (She is, after all, sometimes more monster than girl.) They hold her around her belly, her arms and legs dangling towards the floor, and she hangs there, panting, dripping, frantic, watching as Joel bends over Ellie. After_ _far_ _too long, Ellie vomits up water and hauls herself upright from the floor._

_Birdie goes limp with relief. She allows her captor, who turns out to be Joel’s next door neighbor Esther, to hold her upright instead of being dangled, and she sobs into Esther’s shoulder._

_Everyone remembers that night - except for Ellie, who remembers only being very hot and wanting a bath before waking up on the floor with Joel looking at her worriedly - for different reasons. Birdie remembers it with terror (and for a good while afterwards, refuses every single bath or shower option that isn’t initiated by her). Joel, Tommy, Maria, and Esther recall it as the night they realized how absolutely strong Birdie is: strong enough to pick up a person stronger, taller, and heavier than her, one who was completely unconscious, lift her over the high side of the claw-footed tub, and attempt to give her sloppy CPR with such frantic motions that it broke three of Ellie’s ribs._

_And they wonder just what the people who’d held her captive wanted all that strength_ _for_ _._

* * *

The little party of three - Ellie, Dina, and Erick - make their way down the wide basement steps. As the door closes behind them the noises of chaos upstairs are somewhat sealed off. Lights flicker on, creating a humming sound overhead as they make their way deeper into the building, showing blue cinder block walls and orange metal hand railings.

“What are we going to find down here, Erick?” Dina asks, sounding almost conversational.

“Records,” Erick says tightly.

“No experiments? No clickers in pajamas? Neat trick, by the way.”

“Just… records.”

More lights click on at the base of the stairs, illuminating a large, windowless cinder block room filled with file cabinets. There must be a hundred of them - navy, black, white, cream, dark green - standing in orderly rows ten or twelve deep across the cement floor.

“Whoa,” Ellie murmurs. Whatever she was expecting, this wasn’t it. “There’s… so much here.”

Erick nods sullenly. “If you’re looking for B-one’s records, they start over there.”

He indicates the row of navy filing cabinets with a jerk of his chin.

Ellie moves towards the first navy filing cabinet and sees “B-1-R-D-1” written on a piece of tape stuck to the front. “Erick,” she says as she pulls the top drawer open, “if you got Bird - _b-one_ \- back here, what would you do to ‘finish’ her?”

The drawer is full of thick files. There are reams of paperwork. Ellie pulls the first one out and opens it, propping it up on the top of the filing cabinet.

_Case File: #B1RD1_

_Orphaned female. Approx. 2 y.o. Parents unknown to this establishment. Man who surrendered her said she was found in “a pile of bodies.”_

A grainy Polaroid is stapled to the pink form. Bright-eyed, chubby, grinning, one non-deformed hand reaching out for the lens: it’s Birdie.

 _Fuck,_ Ellie thinks. _They experimented on a_ _baby_ _._

There’s a small piece of paper attached to the pink form, just under the Polaroid: a receipt for two guns, two boxes of ammunition, and a horse.

 _They_ _paid_ _for a baby to experiment on._

“We’d… there’s more tests we’d need to run. To make sure she could wield the elemental force without it harming her. It was really fucking up her brain when she was still with us. Making her sick.”

“And you wanted her to wield it because…?”

“Because we’re making soldiers. And soldiers who don’t need weapons can be infinitely powerful. Has she… done anything since she’s been with you?”

“Oh, lots of things,” Dina says. “Last week she ate most of a cherry pie before someone found her.”

Ellie flips to the next page. _Child’s personal effects: 1 star-shaped hair clip, 1 silver bracelet, 1 green security blanket, 2 pairs pants, 2 shirts, 1 board book. Stored in Locker HB7._

“Where’s Locker HB7?” she asks, looking up at Erick and Dina.

“Down the hall,” Erick says.

“You want me to go check something out?” Dina offers.

Ellie nods and passes over the form. “Go get our girl’s stuff back.”

“You got it.”

The next form is filled with test scores. Apparently Birdie was about average, rating a little higher on any spatial reasoning puzzles and many of the physical tests. After that, it’s blood work, meaningless values that Ellie doesn’t understand. Height, weight, grip strength. Stamped at the bottom: _Cleared for project work._

“She’s hurt people, hasn’t she?”

Ellie looks up, startled at Erick’s voice. It rings loud in the cement room.

“That’s why you’re here,” he goes on. “You want answers. You want to fix her.”

“She’s not broken,” Ellie says. The lie tastes like copper.

“You don’t believe that.” He takes a step towards her, his hands squirming in their restraints. “You came here because something’s wrong.”

“We came here because you’re sick fucks,” Ellie says, pushing through the copper taste and finding steel. “You need to stop what you’re doing.”

“You don’t give a shit about the clickers,” Erick challenges her. “You’re concerned with B-one. And what’s worse, you _care_ about her.”

He shakes his head. “That’s like the first rule of science - don’t care about the subjects.”

“Then I guess it’s good I’m not a scientist,” Ellie says.

She flips through the next few pages. Medicine names, she thinks, and dosages. Descriptions of symptoms. More tests. Physical experimentation. A series of drawings of a far-too-small body and things inflicted upon it.

She closes the file and reaches for the next one. _B1RD1 + exposure to cordyceps-infected subjects._

“Who adopted her?” Erick asks. “The two of you? Is she your kid? Kinda weird, considering she’s not that much younger than you.”

Ellie thinks back to the photo, the date written next to it. Birdie’s seventeen, according to the paperwork. _Fourteen years of experimentation and pain before she got to us._

She pages through the first few pieces of paper in the folder. A photo of Birdie, maybe five years old, strapped down to a table, screaming. It twists Ellie’s stomach. She reads the brief description of the “experiment”: pin Birdie down, let a clicker bite her, see what happened.

“She was a kid,” she says, before she can stop herself.

Erick snorts. “She was more than that.”

“She was a fucking _kid,_ and you _pinned her down_ to let her get bit,” Ellie says, holding up the photo so Erick can see it. “Fully expecting her to turn. Were you just going to shoot her in the head when she turned?”

“She was too valuable for that,” Erick says. “And as you must know by now, she didn’t turn.”

“You didn’t have a lot of extra children around to torture, huh?”

“Nobody like her.”

Dina returns with a small box. “Found it,” she says. “And guess what else I found?”

Ellie sticks the file on Birdie’s clicker exposure in her backpack. “What?”

“A name.”

Emotion rushes over Ellie like a wave pulling her under. It’s one of the mysteries she’s always wanted to solve for Birdie - _what’s your_ _real_ _name?_

“You did?” she asks, her voice husky.

Dina nods. She brings the box over to Ellie and opens the top, taking out a tiny silver bracelet with a dangling clasp and a silver star engraved on it. She flips over the bracelet, and there, in looping script, are four letters: _Luna._

Ellie’s eyes fill with tears and she closes her hand over the bracelet. If they find nothing else, nothing else to help Birdie, they’ve found the one answer Ellie always wanted. And maybe it’s selfish, but she feels like they could leave now - leave Erick in this basement tied up while his colleagues fight the army they created in their own building by their own free will, and go back to Jackson, and it would have been a worthy trip.

She looks down into the box. “I wonder if she’ll remember any of this stuff,” she whispers to Dina.

“I’m excited to find out,” Dina answers in a similar whisper, her eyes bright. She puts the box in her backpack. “Did you find anything we might need?”

“Not unless you can figure out how to get eighteen filing cabinets out of here.” Ellie sighs.

“I’m strong, but not _that_ strong. You keep going on this one, I’ll start with the next one, we’ll look for whatever this ‘elemental’ stuff is he keeps going on about.”

With that Dina walks towards the second filing cabinet in the row and opens it up.

“What are you guys looking for?” Erick asks. “Like, specifically. I could help you… maybe it would go faster.”

“Do you really want us to let you go so you can go get eaten?” Dina replies.

“I’m sure my colleagues are handling things,” Erick says.

“Well, okay,” Dina says.

“You want to know why she keeps getting sick, right?”

Ellie closes the top drawer and starts on the second.

“It has to do with elemental potential running through her,” Erick goes on, though no one had asked him to continue. “We started with drugs - the same ones we were using on the others in her cohort to increase strength and build muscle and repair injury faster. She got all those. Then we used…”

In the second file in the second drawer is an invoice. _To provide one (1) enhanced immune fighter to Amos Fiddlehead, Butte._

“Who’s Amos Fiddlehead?” Ellie asks, cutting off Erick’s monologue.

“What?”

Ellie brings him the invoice. “Who were you selling her to?”

Erick’s eyes scan the piece of paper. “Oh, yeah, that guy. He’s in charge of a settlement in Butte.”

“And he was buying…?”

“At first he wanted ten of our enhanced,” Erick says. “Then he saw B-one and decided he only wanted her.”

“What happened after she disappeared?”

“He wasn’t too fond of that. Said he was going to go out and look for her. Obviously he didn’t find her… unless you guys are from Butte. Are you from Butte?”

“Does he still want… _enhanced?”_ Ellie asks.

“I mean, I’m sure he does. But between you two and…” Erick jerks his chin in the general direction of the upper floors of the building. “... all that, I don’t think he’ll get them.”

“Sucks for him,” Ellie says, and she returns to her filing cabinet.

* * *

It’s dark when Birdie opens her eyes again. She’s still in Maria’s arms.

“Sweet girl,” Maria says softly, “are you hungry?”

Birdie thinks about it. She _could_ be hungry.

“Would you like to at least try eating something?” Maria offers. “I don’t have any pie left, but…”

Birdie smiles. She’d enjoyed the pie, and she’d _really_ enjoyed scaring the two women who found her, covered in cherries, looking for all the world like a feral goblin who’d emerged, blood-drenched, from a freshly-eaten kill.

“Let’s try something small,” Maria says. “Tommy made chicken and potatoes. How’s that sound?”

She helps Birdie sit on the edge of the bed, standing before the girl with her hands on Birdie’s knees. Birdie reaches her arms up and puts them around Maria’s neck. _“Eeh-ah,”_ she says.

“Hmm?”

_“Ah-eeh?”_

“Ellie went on a trip,” Maria says.

Birdie frowns. She’s not great with days, and to be fair, things have been a bit squirrely in her head since the day she went-swimming-and-killed-a-man (as she’ll always think of it now), but she’s pretty sure Ellie isn’t scheduled for patrol. She wants to ask _where’d she go?_ but of course that’s not in her reach.

“Do you remember earlier when I asked you if you remembered about where you were before?”

Birdie nods.

“Ellie and Dina… went to see that place.”

Birdie freezes. It gets hard for her to breathe. She grips down onto Maria’s shoulders. _No!_ blazes across her mind and she wants to scream.

“It’s okay,” Maria says. “They’ll be safe. They’re very skilled and smart. You know them.”

 _No!_ Birdie’s scream is still caught in her chest. She’s slipping back there - glass walls and cement walls and cement floor and sobbing and screaming and clicking like hers and clicking not like hers and pain and pain and _pain -_

“Breathe,” Maria says, and a hand pushes on Birdie’s chest. Not hard, just firm enough to prompt action.

Birdie gulps air. _“Ah-eeh,”_ she tells Maria. _“Ah-eeh, ah-eeh…”_

“They’ll come home soon.”

Birdie screams, just a little, and then quickly bites down on her hand, trying to keep the rest of the scream inside. She feels it bubble up into where her hunger was only moments before.

“Shh, shh, hey,” Maria says, gently trying to get Birdie’s hand free from her mouth. “Be gentle to yourself, remember?”

Birdie punches her forehead with her free hand and lets out a little more of the scream. _“Nah,”_ she gasps out. _“Nnn… nah.”_

Her palm feels wet. Breathing hard, she brings her hand down, forcing the scream back into the roiling pit of her gut. Her hand is a bloody mess, and Birdie flashes back to eating the pie. This looks different, feels different. (Part of her still wants to lick it. Sometimes monster, sometimes girl.)

“You had a blister there,” Maria says. “It must have burst. I’ll get you some ointment and a bandage. Please… sweetheart… just take some deep breaths. Be gentle.”

Birdie grabs onto her tag necklace, pressing it into her hand, and stares down at her bloody, swollen palm. She pushes off the bed and staggers to her feet. She wobbles down the hall towards the front door.

Her head pounds. It’s getting hard to breathe.

She opens the front door and looks out into the dark.

“Maria?! What’s this trail of blood? You okay?”

Birdie stares out at the night. It’s too big. She can’t remember where everything is.

“Hey, little bird,” Tommy says from behind her. His voice is soft. Careful.

_Sometimes monster - mostly girl - mostly monster?_

“Let’s get you taken care of,” Tommy goes on. “You’re makin’ a mess on Maria’s clean floor. An’ we’ll both catch hell for it.”

The scream fills more of Birdie’s stomach. Someday she’ll be more scream than girl - _than monster_ \- and she’s not sure what happens then.

“Bird,” she hears Tommy try. “Just turn around and look at me, okay?”

She would. She _wants_ to. But she isn’t sure what she’s going to see when she looks into his eyes.

She closes her eyes and lets the scream break over her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.


End file.
